


In-Between Collection #2

by Kuronrko98



Series: Maladaptive Daydreaming Work: The Cube and Related Universes [9]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Literal Murder, Self-Insert, do not copy to another site, ill fix the tags later please bear with me, im trying to distract myself while i wait for camp nano to start, just so you know part 2 has an actual on screen murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 17:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19430263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuronrko98/pseuds/Kuronrko98
Summary: Working with Kane and the Scouts is a welcome distraction while Breaking Furnace gets more and more stressful. Jesse doesn't know how to feel about who working with the Scouts is turning them into. They're also in the dark about a few of Kane's plans while he looks to others for answers.Meanwhile, Connor has to live in the In-Between while Breaking Furnace is paused. He's getting to know Jess's splinter and V. The former is more than willing to make friends. The latter would rather be left alone to do their job.





	1. First Day on the Job

**May 31st, 2016 - The Original**

“You think you’re ready?”

I scowl back at Kane. He waves a green slip of paper at me.

I hate that I don’t actually regret signing back on with the Scouts. I hate how many of my friends have either turned their backs on me or warned me against this, and that I _still_ don’t regret it. I hate that I’m doing so well, both in the clan and out. I hate how much credit Kane takes for my success.

I hate how quick I am to snatch the paper from his hand.

“This one asked for you.” Kane crosses his arms, his customary grin still firmly in place. “It took us a while to figure that out, though, ‘cause it’s not a name we recognized.”

It’s a green slip, miscellaneous. It could be anything, depending on how incompetent the one who made the job was. Some people choose green because they’re too lazy to find the accurate category. I don’t look at the paper, though.

“Who did they ask for?”

“Copycat.”

My blood cools. I have to bite my tongue to keep from sucking in a breath, from saying something, from accusing him of lying. I watch Kane long enough for him to tilt his head in a silent question. I turn away to read the slip of paper.

> Request date: 10/10/2015 Renewal date: 03/14/2016  
>  Category: Miscellaneous   
> Contact: Bill Cipher  
>  Requested Scout: Copycat  
>  Start date: 05/30/2016 Due Date: 08/31/2016  
>  Job notes: Break Stanford Pines to pieces and shards. Play on my home turf and see who comes out on top.

“I already found the door to the universe you need to go to,” Kane goes on. “You can start anywhere as long as you finish the job in time.”

I nod idly and fold the slip. I walk away without another word, back down the hall with The Lounge in mind. I don’t look back when Kane's voice follows me down the hall. I hardly even hear him. I need to talk to Cipher. To do that, I’m assuming I’ll need to play his game. He might accuse me of copying him, but I’ve been on this train a long time before I ever heard of that tortilla chip.

I’d better get started.

~-S-~

I’ve never been to New Jersey.

I mean, I’ve never even been off the west coast before. Not to mention, this is fifty years in my world’s past. I know for a fact that this universe might not be accurate to the real New Jersey of the time, but—

I shake my head to dislodge the thought. I only have a few months to do this job. I can’t get myself caught up thinking about how the doors interpret the places I haven’t been. I still need to find the Pines twins.

“It’s muggy as hell here,” Kane notes, and I glare daggers back at him.

“You didn’t have to follow me.”

“Oh, but I did.” He shrugs it off and strides ahead of me. “You’re my responsibility until the council says otherwise.”

I follow him up Glass Shard Beach High School’s steps with crossed arms. Other students dot the campus, acting as teenagers do in any decade. I startle at a shout behind me but I don’t take my eyes from Kane’s back.

He’s playing the role of guardian this time, and I can’t stand it. I get that I need someone to get the school to let me in, I do. I don’t need a babysitter from the Scouts. This is supposed to be my job even if it’s only my first real day back.

“Relax.” Kane opens the door and gestures me in, which earns him another scowl. “I’ll stay out of your hair unless you ask for help.”

As if.

I’ve moved to a new school before so I know the whole deal. Kane signs papers and jokes with a secretary while I fuss with a nervous counselor about classes. I end up needing to get Kane to press the guy into actually putting me into the classes I want—‘girls’ don’t normally go into these courses, apparently. 

He expresses surprise at receiving a new student so late in the year and eventually asks where I’m from. I have to glance at a calendar on the wall to catch that it’s early April.

“I’m staying with my uncle for a couple years,” I tell him. “But I’m coming in from Oregon.”

“That’s some way away.”

He hands over a schedule. He’s written in my classes. It throws me off until I remember it’s 1966. I’d assumed it would be typed but I suppose there’s no point in wasting the time. All of the classes are the ones I need.

Still, I smile at the man.

“Thank you. It’s weird to be so far from home.”

A bell sounds, and the counselor waves me away. I have classes to get to, after all. Kane opens the door for me again and nudges me with an elbow.

“Good luck, kid.” He slips into the crowd to finally leave me alone to work. He knows better than anyone that I can't work with someone standing over my shoulder.

I weave through students without consulting my schedule. I memorized the classes I would need to take for this to work, I know where I need to go. I have everything mapped out. I mean, I'm a goddamn _professional_.

I turn a corner in time to see a boy barreling down the hall. I barely turn my head, enough to recognize him. Enough to let him run into me.

I _almost_ manage to stay upright. Gravity wins out in the end, though. I stumble, teeter, and fall flat on my back. The back of my head jolts against the ground in a generally terrible way. It scrambles things up in a way that's too genuine for such a fabricated scenario.

“ _Stanley!_ ”

I put a hand to the back of my head and prop myself up.

“She came outta nowhere!”

I look up to see two nearly identical brown-haired boys hovering over me. They both reach out a hand, then glance at each other. I laugh and grasp both of them to clamber to my feet.

Just the twins I was hoping to see.

“I’m so sorry for my _brother_ ,” the one with glasses huffs, but the look he shoots the other is good-natured. “I’m Stanford.”

“And I’m Stanley. Pines.” Stan claps a hand on my shoulder with a grin. “You oughta look where you’re going.”

“You two weren’t exactly keeping your eyes peeled.” I roll my eyes and dig into my pocket to find my already crumpled schedule. “You wouldn’t happen to know where room 4 is, would you?”

Ford brightens up.

“You have Mr. Ellis first period?” he asks.

I nod and hand over my schedule. He looks it over and his brows shoot up. Stan peers over his shoulder and gives an impressed whistle.

“Told you someone’d come along and give you a run for your money, Sixer.”

Stanford gives his brother a withering look and hands my schedule back.

“I can show you to Mr. Ellis’ room—” He tilts his head and waits for me to supply the end of the sentence.

I smile and push the paper back into my pocket. “Jess. It’s wonderful to meet you both. We should get to class, yeah?”

When Stanley breaks off to head to his own class, Stanford asks where I’m from. It doesn’t take a genius to realize I’m new or that I’m not from around here. It’s a fun segue into how I got interested in science.

He almost seems reluctant when we have to quiet down for class to begin. It's easy to see how eager he is to have someone to talk to about the things his brother just doesn't have an invested interest in. I know Ford won't hit the stuff I want to hear about for some time but I'm ready to wait.

He was easier to hook than I thought he'd be.


	2. Do You Have the Stuff?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The was a prompt someone sent me that just kind of fit with this set of In-Between scenes.

**Indeterminate Date in mid June, 2016 - The Original**

The stars are beautiful tonight. I don’t get much chance to look at them anymore, neither here or in the real world. Waiting for Kane gives me a passable excuse.

I let my arms stretch to either side, then relax. Just fucking T-pose until I can do my job. If only the council would bump me up from F-Class, I could go ahead without having anyone watch over me. Rules are dumb and I hate that this particular one has me on a cold roof in the middle of the night. I have my gloves on and everything.

I turn my head to eye the man cuffed to the roof’s railing.

“Do you ever stargaze?” I ask. He stares at me, and I only wait a beat before I look away. “You might as well do it now, you know. It’s your last chance.”

“If I do—”

“Nah.” I shake my head, but I’m not sure he’d be able to see it. “Would if I could, though.”

I flop onto my side to watch him. Kane will probably get on my case for leaving him with a working mouth. I figure, though, that as long as he stays quiet it doesn’t do any harm.

The guy looks to the stars above, anyway.

They didn't used to have names when I was younger. It was all foggy. Just shapes and noise in the memories of who exactly I found at the end of my jobs. But they have names now and I feel the place I should be feeling a certain bad way about that. The knowledge it should be there, the sickness surrounding this whole thing, but I can't muster the energy to ask why I can't seem to feel it in earnest.

Richard Rice.

I’d never even heard of the guy before Kane handed me this job. A black slip that put me on this goddamn roof with _Richard Rice_ , a nobody who looks like he stares at a screen for a living. It’s a good distraction from Gravity Falls, anyway, since that job turned into a hell of a downer. I hate that this makes me feel better.

I’m sure Richard Rice hates it, too.

“What’d you do to get a price on your head, anyway?”

He drops his gaze back to me, surprisingly calm for the situation. His voice trembles when he speaks, though, barely enough to notice. “You don’t know?”

“What’s the point in telling a hammer why it has to hit a nail?” I roll onto my back with as close to a shrug as I can manage from here. This is probably why Kane told me to gag my targets. “Or whatever tool in whatever metaphor would be most accurate here.”

“You’re a point and shoot kind of girl, huh?” he asks with a shaky laugh.

I aim a weary side-eye at Richard Rice. It’s really not worth it, is it? To correct a dead man?

“I guess.”

He stays silent for a moment, then: “I turned my brother in for killing his wife. That’s the only thing I can think of.”

Huh. Well, that’s a shame. “Like I said, I’d let you off the hook if I could.”

The door to the roof slams open. Richard Rice jolts so hard he bumps back into the bars of the railing. I don’t bother to look back.

“Oh, good, you actually waited,” Kane notes after the door bangs shut again. I could almost call his tone approving.

“I do know how to follow orders.” I roll fluidly to my feet to the tune of my complaining joints and pull out my phone. Finally, I can finish this. It’s too cold for me to be up here without a coat.

“If that were true, he’d be gagged.”

I shoot him a glance. He wears a smile, possibly amused, and doesn’t pursue it further. I lock my phone and drop it under the first few notes of my shuffled work playlist’s choice of music.

“Do you have the stuff?” I ask in a bored drawl.

Kane shrugs, eyes on Richard Rice.

“I couldn’t find the murder kit, but I did bring snacks,” he jokes, as that’s literally what I asked for. He looks to me and flashes a wicked grin.

“Good. I always end up hungry when I work at night.” I turn to Richard Rice, who blanches in the low light. I smile as kindly as I can in my approach. “At the very least, Mr. Rice, I can say this will be fast.”

“Please—”

His eyes glaze over. I can’t help a soft sound of comfort though he can’t hear me anymore. The bars of the railing and the dagger impaling the underside of his chin are the only things keeping him from slumping to the ground.

I gaze at him for a moment before I jerk the knife back a few times to dislodge it and a good amount of blood. I’m glad I’ve had practice with that particular method. I would have felt bad if I’d missed his brain stem after a promise like that.

“If nothing else, you’re efficient,” Karl says with a disappointed huff while I wipe my knife on the corpse’s sleeve. “I hoped you’d make my trip up here worth it.”

“If you’d recommend me for a promotion, you wouldn’t have to bother.” 

Karl grunts a noncommittal response under the crinkle of plastic. I turn back and drop the bloody bundle that was my nitrile gloves barely in time to catch a bag of jerky.

I amble further away from the body and drop to the ground to disinfect my hands. It’s not that I don’t trust the gloves the Scouts provide, but I’m not about to get a blood-transmitted disease from some dead Dick on a roof.

“I wouldn’t have expected you to want a promotion,” Karl says, closer than I expect, before settling on the ground next to me with a duffle full of snack food.

“I wanna ditch my babysitter,” I say. I shove a handful of jerky into my mouth. “Same thing.”

He shrugs, but doesn’t say anything either way.

We hang around for a few hours. It's a nice little picnic where we laugh and ignore the cooling body four yards away. We stay until it really is too cold for me to be out any longer. We have to go eventually, anyway, so whoever got assigned to disposal can take care of Richard Rice’s body.

I feel like this should bother me more than it does.


	3. A Summons

**June 22nd, 2016 - The Original**

In less than a month in the real world, I’ve progressed years in the new Gravity Falls universe. I haven’t been able to find more than traces of Bill. I’m starting to think I might have to summon him to get him to show his face. That’s a little hard to swing when I’m trying to convince Stanford not to drop out of Backupsmore. He’s so close to finishing his thesis, the whole thing will be ruined if he doesn’t get through it.

We need funding in Gravity Falls, after all. It’s hard enough to explain where I get my money as it is, but if I could suddenly fund our research it would bring up questions I can’t answer. I doubt it would go over well that I work for an organization that hired me to fuck with his life.

I kneel down to gather another armful of fallen debris. I might be able to get by with checks from the Scouts in the new universe, but I have to actually work in the real world. Preparing firebreaks is mind-numbing enough for me to be able to talk to Kane at the same time, however.

“I still don’t think you had to start so early.” 

He keeps pace with me on my back and forth between the tree line and our brush piles. I don’t look at him. I’m not sure how long we’ve been working today. I’m starting to get a headache and I’m not sure if it’s from the work itself or Kane’s voice. Or, just Kane in general.

“I knew he would get closed off later. The only other people he talks to without prompting are his parents and Fiddleford.” I clench my jaw and resist the temptation to fall back into the universe, back into the argument with Stanford. “These days I’m more of a sounding board than an actual person, I think.”

“Genuine affection?” Kane appears in front of me, head inclined. “That’s dangerous.”

I walk right through him.

“I don’t know how much about him I’ve changed just by being there,” I go on as if he never spoke. “But I would never be able to get close enough if I'd waited much longer.”

“Have you found your contact yet?”

I shake my head, just a little, even in the real world.

“I think he’s tipped his hat at me in the few chances I’ve had to sneak away to Gravity Falls, but—” I stop with a grunt, knelt down to tug a branch back into the road. “—I might have to risk opening my mind to him if I want him to talk to me.” 

He makes a thoughtful sound, and I finally take the bait to step back into my full dreamscape. I keep half a mind on my job but the two of us land back in the Cube to talk. I turn on my heel to face him.

“About time.”

He lounges against the wall with a thick envelope held out in offering. It doesn’t look like a job card, but he doesn’t have any other business to be bothering me with. I make no move to take it so he holds it up to inspect it under the light.

“I don’t know the last time I had to deliver a summons.” He gives me a side-eye. “Especially to an F-Class Scout.”

I glower and hold a hand out for the envelope. He surprises me by actually handing it over.

“And where am I being summoned to?” I ask while I break the wax sealing it shut.

“The council.”

I pause with the thick paper halfway out of its sheath. I stare down at my hands with the momentary expectation for it to attack. But, no, it’s just paper. A normal envelope carrying a letter on the kind of stationary I wish I could afford. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to receive from an Ivy League college or a government official. It’s certainly fancier than the scrolls I normally send notes around the Cube in.

I’ve always gotten the feeling that the council hated me. I’ve only heard whispers, rumors of threats, from the group. I’ve met only one of the members, though I’m almost certain he’s not a good indication of what the council is like.

They’re the ones that hold our lists. They keep track of who they can use as leverage against individual Scouts. They watch us and decide what requires punishment in the form of making those lists shorter.

I manage to only hesitate a few seconds before I dive in and read the letter. It's more like a glorified note. It’s a full sheet of paper but it only bears five words typed neatly in the center.

‘ _Come at your earliest convenience._ ’

I fold the paper and shove it back into the envelope. I look back to Kane, who watches me with narrowed eyes.

I won’t let him see that I’m nervous. I won’t let him see anything.

“Take me to them.”

~-S-~

I try to avoid actually going to the Scouts’ main headquarters. Base. Lair. Whatever. It’s busy, everyone recognizes me, and I don’t like it. I want to keep my work with the Scouts and my identity in the Cube as separate as possible. I’m starting to think that won’t _be_ possible.

I force myself not to look at anyone, at anything. I only take in a vague impression of gray in the halls, the rumble of voices only presented as a low hum. A few faces jump out as more familiar than others, members of The Collective and others I wasn’t aware of being part of the clan. If they try to talk to me, it doesn’t register.

I focus on Kane instead.

I thought he would lead and expect me to follow. He doesn’t. He walks barely a half-step ahead of me, so I have to watch him out of the corner of my eye. I’ve never seen a trainee walk beside their supervisor.

Then again, Kane hasn’t exactly been treating me like a trainee lately. All of it’s off, ever so slightly. I wouldn’t notice if I didn’t know him so well. The smile, missing its mocking edge. His stride straight and clipped instead of fluid. Where’s the joke he always seems to be telling just by being present?

He’s normally so difficult to work with. I have to jump through hoops to get an answer. He twists and flips a problem until I come to the conclusion he wants me to, making it sound like it’s my idea. Distracts me when I’m trying to do my job or focus on the real world. 

I didn’t have to convince him to hand over the summons.

I think back on it, to when he first offered me my job back. He was his normal self then. He stayed that way until I accepted it. Until I finished training. Until I started the job in Gravity Falls.

Wait--No.

He dropped it once. It was the second time I’d ever seen him let go of the persona. When he came to tell me about the new member of the Collective in the Breaking Furnace universe, he was serious.

Since then, we’ve almost been on the same foot. He only hovers as much as the rules say he has to. He follows me on jobs, reminds me of deadlines, the bare minimum. Other than that, he stays out of my way with just a touch of snark.

“Here we are.”

His voice doesn’t reflect the change at all. Light, a laugh hidden beneath the words. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes when he stops in front of a wide door, though.

I reach for the door, but he grabs my arm. I freeze.

The last time he physically stopped me from doing something, I almost got myself killed. He would have been fine, he’s made of cement. I would have been fine eventually, would have woken up good as new. No one wants to die, though.

It stuck with me, I guess.

“Be careful,” he mutters. “They don’t take well to clever kids.”

He doesn’t let go right away and that’s probably a good thing. I can’t move, though the desire to flee sears my blood. I shouldn’t have come. It would have been better to take my chances and ignore the council.

The thought flickers and dies when Kane releases me. He opens the door so I don’t have much choice but to walk in.

The door clicks shut behind me to leave me walking down a plush hall on my own. I have to squint in the low light, but there isn’t much to see. A crimson carpet and bare cream walls lead up to a door set at the end of the passage, that’s it. Dark, warm, red. I hate the cliche of walking down a lion’s throat, but _come on_. Such a straight, plain hall leaves no room for surprises. It also gives me nowhere to hide if I lose my nerve.

But nothing happens. Nothing peels from the walls on the attack. No shadows move. The big, bad, tongue of a floor doesn’t constrict and drag me into the depths. I reach the luxurious door wound like a spring, but otherwise unharmed.

The room it spits me out in leaves me blind and uneasy. I pause when the door closes, frozen in place. My ears strain, panic pushing me to survey what I can how I can. I’m too aware of everything I’ve heard of the council to push down the fear clawing up my throat. 

To believe the silence.

Families going missing. Friends put in the hospital. Children recruited. Punishments, all of it, against disobedient workers. Why would they call me here? If I did something wrong, why would they call for me instead of striking a name?

It occurs to me that I may have been looking at this wrong.

How many lists am _I_ on?

I heard D joined the Scouts just days after I took Kane’s job offer. Half the Cube must be on his with how many strays he picks up. Then there’s the members of the Collective I saw on the way in. Haz, Jezaebeth, who knows how many others? Is it too much to hope that they don’t care enough for me to be on theirs’? I’m not the most rebellious out of us all. If Haz ignores an order or Jaezebeth mouths off, could I be a target? If D refuses to hurt someone? If Gray’s out there, she vanishes at the drop of a hat. If it’s decided she needs incentive to stay here, am I on her list?

I know I could take out the council if I wanted to. I could level the entire base, leave a hole in the Cube so deep nothing could crawl out of it. It could be over, the lists and the jobs and the orders.

But I can’t—more accurately, I _won’t_. 

I’ve been hasty before and had it come back to bite me. Destroyed Tchaikovsky’s original compound not long after I left, ended up with the man himself on my doorstep because I convinced myself he was gone.

If that happens with the Scouts, worse will happen than a single nightmare haunting me. I’ve made death too temporary here. No matter what I want, they would come back.

No.

I have to find out what they want like a good little soldier.

I take a miraculously steady breath and unclench my hands. I didn’t realize I’d curled them in so tight. I focus on the sting and imagine the half-moon impressions on my palm when I step out into the dark.

I don’t know if they’ve been watching me—I’m not sure if they _could_ , it’s so dark—but a light flicks on before I take more than a few steps. Before my bearings can become more mixed up than they already are. Before I can trip up the stairs to the raised platform illuminated in the spotlight just in front of me. 

I manage not to hesitate to climb onto the circular platform and settle in the center. The dramatics of the whole thing make it feel so staged it’s almost easy to pretend it’s all for show.

Just another performance.

I can do that. That's _what I do_.

I hold my head high to slide my gaze over the seven figures seated above me. I work to keep myself from showing even a flicker of the defiance or fear I feel, but I know better than to think I fully succeed. I’ve faced worse than the council, but I’ve cracked at less. The ultimate fear--an assessment with seven figures watching my every move.

I probably should have put on my uniform before I came, though I haven’t touched it once since receiving it. It might make me seem more conforming. Less like I’m spitting in their face just by existing. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what they think of me.

At first glance the council members appear identical. Their white hoods block what little of the light focused on me hitting them, fabric masks cover what the hood doesn’t. Unlike the standard Scout uniform, aside from the arrogance of being white while the rest of us need the black uniforms to keep from being seen, their sleeves cover their arms, snug against the seams of their shorter gloves.

The longer I stand here in silence, though, the more I see.

The hood of the second to the right bulges, the telltale sign of horns or too much hair hidden underneath. Their mirror has a snout, their mask fitted to compensate. A shadow looms behind the center chair, and it takes me a second to recognize them as wings. On the far left, red eyes gleam through the shadows of the hood.

Devon.

I don’t linger on him, wary of revealing I know the guy. I doubt that would help either of us out any.

My chest hurts, the anxiety now physically painful. I don’t know what they’re waiting for. Am I supposed to say something? Am I supposed to suffer and wait? I can’t make a wrong move here. I might be hot shit in the Cube, but this isn’t my territory. I have too much history of disobedience, too much power. I could sway half of this universe against them if I tried, they know I could walk out of here and unmake them with barely a thought.

But they also know I don’t enjoy ruining the ending of a good story. And that’s the whole reason I’m here, isn’t it?

So I wait, hands at my sides, obedient. I won’t give them any reason to believe I’m a threat. They’re just as good at setting hidden plots in motions as I am.

“Perry.”

I incline my head rather than speak aloud. I don’t know if I’d be able to hide my surprise at Devon being the one to address me first.

“You have shown remarkable ability, considering how long you were—” he pauses and the others hiss a breath on cue. “—away.”

Do they rehearse these things?

“It’s as if you never left,” he purrs. “Aside from the rebellious attitude you seem to have shed.”

Rebellious attitude.

I lift my head, careful not to move too fast, and turn my eyes on Devon.

I’ve met him once, not long before I ‘went away.’ He was cold and completely ignored me until Kane left the room. His gaze felt like it could read everything about me, but all I could do was glare at him like the little shit I was when I was eight. I can’t remember what he said, when he finally spoke to me, but it confused me. Something about Kane. I can almost find the shape of the words, but they’ve been lost to time.

The figure in the center chair shifts. Their wings catch the light, though not enough for me to really _see_ them. It would be too easy to identify them if I did, I suppose.

“Your supervisor has hinted that your current classification is restricting both your efficiency and improvement.” The winged council member’s voice snakes through the room, high and smooth. Unfamiliar. “Knowing this, your council has seen fit to elevate you to your previous status.”

I raise my brows, but still say nothing. This isn’t what I expected. Not only am I not being threatened, I’m being promoted? Skipping a classification?

“Your talents are wasted in F-Class—see that you continue to impress.” 

Ah, there’s the threat.

“Do you require any clarifications or reminders of what returning to D-Class will require of you?” a thin wheeze asks from the far right. “It has been several years, after all.”

I hesitate.

I remember how it works. My supervisor will fill my PDA with pre-screened jobs for me to choose from instead of handpicking them for me. I have a quota, a balance between jobs of different sizes, that I’m expected to fill. He doesn’t have to shadow me. He technically doesn’t have to contact me at all unless I’m behind, but expecting Kane to leave me alone is laughable.

This is... highly unusual.

Both times I was promoted as a kid, Kane walked in and announced it by throwing me an official description of my new responsibilities and a new PDA equipped for them. As far as I know, the council doesn’t _do_ this. This isn’t how this works.

But Kane warned me about being clever. What would they consider cheek? Would asking why they decided to give me the news be presumptuous? Would asking any question be ruled as another strike against me?

In the end, I ask when I’ll be getting my D-Class PDA. The one in my pocket will be useless in my new role. It's a safe enough question.

The winged council member’s face mask strains in a smile, and I can’t help the feeling they’re laughing at me. I don’t move, sure that if I do I won’t be leaving this room without losing another life.

“It was delivered to your supervisor moments ago,” they say. “You’d better go get it.”

It would be hard to miss a dismissal as pointed as that. I dip my head in a nod, touch my left hand to my right shoulder in a hasty salute, and turn on my heel. It takes all of my self control not to run.

When I open the door to leave the room, I step out back in the fresh air of forest instead of the terrible hall. A handful of sticks fall from my hand, and I have to re-orient myself. The taste of fear still sticky in my throat, the dreamscape a thick web clinging to my skin.

I’ll have to deal with that later. I have to get the PDA from Kane. I have to sort through the terror keeping me from scooping up sticks with any kind of efficiency. I have to decide if the satisfaction at a promotion makes me a bad person or not. 

Leaving a dream is always a lot harder than getting into it, and I’m starting to wonder if I ever really leave them anymore. 


	4. This is Fine

**July 10th, 2016 - The Scientist/Inventor**

What Jess does with their free time is none of my business. They don’t butt into my lab and tell me what not to do, so I won’t jump in and tell them not to work for the Scouts. I won’t tell them they should bury the pricks in a pit. The whole thing’s just coming too close to my own door. D joining up right after them to keep an eye on things. Jess calling me out to keep them from dying on the job. Having to hide their memories in the recesses of their mind so Bill Cipher can’t get hold of them.

Then there’s this.

“My back rooms?”

I swivel around to glare at Kane. He lounges in an office chair next to my desk. Like he thinks he has a right to be here, to be _comfortable_ here.

“Just a peek.” He spins in the chair, and I hate that it makes me think of Jess. That there’s anything to connect the two of them. “It’s the best kept secret in the Cube, you can’t blame me for being curious.”

He wants to see my real work.

I hold my breath until the knee-jerk reaction to expel him from the lab passes. Until I can raise a brow in question. Until I _can_ breathe normally and speak in a level voice.

“Why should I show you anything?” I ask, impressed at how smooth it comes out. “After you drag half my life into your organization, you want to see the rest of it, too?”

“My sources—” He doesn’t wait for the chair to slow before leaping upright. He perches on the edge of a desk instead. “—tell me whatever’s back there’s more than half of it.”

His ‘sources.’ “Jess really has been running their mouth, haven’t they?”

He shrugs.

“No, actually.” His tone shifts, subtle but still there. A few more inches away from the edge of a joke. “All they’ve let slip is some information about those scramblers of yours.”

“What about them?” It comes out too sharp, and a shard of ice lodges itself in the back of my mind. I need to shut this down before he manages to dig any deeper. “Why are you here?”

“I heard you can keep them from listening in on conversations they shouldn’t.” He says, no sign of being thrown by my hostility. “Is it just them, or…”

I squint at him. That’s a harmless enough question, I suppose. My scramblers aren't exactly my most scandalous project.

“No.” I grope behind me until my metal fingers knock into the sphere on my desk. I pull it up to show him. “It’s less complicated than they think it is.”

“Oh?” He sidles closer and I resist the temptation to snatch it back. I keep my arm held at its full length so he can inspect the thing. It isn’t all that impressive, really, just a bisected metal ball with a few buttons on the sides.

“It just cranks up the Cube’s natural feedback. They probably don’t even notice the interference since it’s their head,” I explain. “It’s louder when we dip into the powers it gives us anyway, sounds from the real world, ghost sensations, after effects of the time lag between there and here, things like that.”

His brow furrows. Disappointment? Anger? It smooths away before I can really decide and he straightens up to face me again.

He hesitates, which is a strange thing to see from him. “What about surveillance? Cameras, mics, things like that.”

I pull the scrambler back to my chest, careful not to crush it. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done something stupid like that. Surveillance? 

“What do you mean?” I ask slowly. “Like, can I _make_ some, or..?”

He flaps a hand at the device with a grumble. “Can that thing keep conversations completely private, no matter who—or what—is listening?”

I stare at him.

“Two-Point-One-Six!” I call. I angle myself toward the camera over the door. “Trigger ‘Silent Night’ in rooms one through seven for one hour.”

“ _I need a reason for the log, then_ ,” the new AC’s tinny voice comes over the intercom. “ _I disabled the override. You always forget to fill them out._ ”

I glance at Kane, who raises a brow.

“I’m… gossiping?” I wince. This could go one of two ways. I know how J355 would have played along with a joke or a lie, but 2.16 isn’t really anything like them.

“ _Mhm. Whatever you say._ ” Good enough, I guess. “ _Program queued: Silent Night. Purpose: Sleepover protocol. Duration: One hour. Localized? One through seven. Confirmation?_ ”

I sigh. This isn’t what I wanted. “Confirmed.”

“ _Running in three, two—_ ”

The lights shut down to leave us in a pitch black room. One by one, the whir of machinery dies around us. After a few seconds, I catch wisps of curiosity from Kane. I guess I’ll have to tell the rest of The Collective to stop calling him soulless, then.

“What are you really here for?” I can’t see him, but without the scramblers I might as well. Every movement makes impossible sound, every thought rolling out like a Twitter feed that I struggle to ignore. “Whatever you have to say will be for my ears only.”

And Jesse, if they think to look in on my sudden appearance on the Collective’s radar, but I doubt I need to remind him of that.

“What did you do?”

“Everything electrical has been shut down. Computers, scramblers…” I give his general direction a pointed look, even though I know he can’t see me. “Cameras and mics. Sleepover protocol, same as Vegas Rules.”

“Came here expecting to dance around shit,” he mutters.

I smile. “After this, we can go back to hating each other, etcetera, etcetera. Who’s watching you?”

“The council, same as Jess.” There’s a soft impact, and something tips over with a rattle. A brief touch with the corner of my thoughts tells me it was a can of bolts I left on the floor. “They watch all of us. It makes it hard to overthrow the assholes.”

“Wh—” The scrambler slips out of my hand. It thunks on the ground but doesn’t make the worrying crunch I’ve heard come from them too many times before. Unease drifts in from Karl, somehow more faint than I would have expected after relying on the scramblers for so long. “Does Jesse know?”

He shakes his head with a grunt of denial. “They’re already on the council’s bad side.”

“They’re also a phenomenal liar.” I send a flicker of thought at him, a nectar-infected clone turned inside out in the lab I abandoned. “They aren’t scared of knowing shit they shouldn’t, probably in some way thanks to you.”

Guilt stabs through him, and I wonder just how much control he normally has over himself. How much of his emotions are normally held in check, somewhere even Jess can’t touch them? How long has he been training himself?

“It doesn’t matter.” He shakes it off and the thought disappears under what feels like a solid wall in his head. I want to push against it, but I don’t. I have a feeling he’d disappear if I did. “With eyes on both of us, I can’t say anything.”

“So you need a way to keep your conversations private?” I tilt my head. “You think I would make that for you?”

He shrugs. “My contact on the council thought of it. Talking freely like this, it’d be nice to be in control of that.”

His contact on the council.

I chew the inside of my cheek. No one ever comes to me unless they want something. I don’t mind, and this sounds important. Hurt the Scouts by helping Kane. Change how things are, keep the ones I know safe.

It doesn’t mean I trust him.

“Define ‘overthrow.’”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Get rid of the lists, for one. That’s the jist of the plan for now. Everything else will come later, when it’s not just a handful of us figuring it out.” 

I consider him. He has no reason to lie to me. No one else is listening. I can’t help that I don’t trust him, not really. I can’t help that I read every action of his as a ploy, every slip as purposeful. There are too many variables, but it could be worth the gamble.

“I should have something here that’ll work,” I finally say. “Come back this time tomorrow.”

I don’t feel the emotion that should go with his grin, just the echo of the motion bouncing around in my head. It gives me a strange sense of uncanny valley. I know I should be able to feel it, but he’s ridiculously advanced at controlling what he projects for someone outside of The Collective.

I wonder… 

“Great.”

He starts to back away, but I stoop down to grab my scrambler. He stops, though I don’t think I made a sound, not even when I hurl it in his direction. He catches the scrambler with a rough crack between the metal and the cement of his hand.

I don’t comment. I should have guessed he could see the same way I could. I should have known someone who spends so much time lying to or messing with Jess would have learned how to listen to the Cube so well.

“If you’re really worried about them knowing about your little plan, I figure you could use a little help,” I say instead.

He bounces it in his hand, a wry smile curling like the amusement I know he’s _choosing_ to let me see. “Secret Sleepover Protocol friends, then?”

With how much time Jesse’s spending around him, I’m not surprised at all that their jokes are reaching him. I hope I don’t end up seeing him enough for him to absorb the way I talk, too.

But I smile. Whatever he’s hiding here, I can lie about my loyalties too. “The Sleepover Protocol works miracles, doesn’t it?” 


	5. New Day, Same Shit

**August 4th, 2016 - The Original**

It’s the last day of the season. Last day of work. Last day swimming around in the creek to count fish. Last drive in the van. 

I don’t know how I feel about it, not really. It was a fun job. It was cool, adding data to the studies we were asked to step in on. Simple work in the woods. Easy enough, at least, that my mind could wander nearly every day. Easy enough for me to finish the Gravity Falls assignment in my spare time.

So, I may have been a little creative on the execution. If Cipher didn’t want me to put the guy back together, he should have said so. He takes advantage of loopholes and slips of the tongue often enough. I’m surprised he didn’t see it coming.

I’ve ignored two summons from the council since then. Well, I haven’t _ignored_ them, I stuffed my timetable full and insisted I was too busy to meet with them. The first time was likely forgivable. The second, if the dark look Kane gave me when I refused the fancy little envelope, was not.

I’ve been expecting an assassination attempt. A ransom on one of my friends. A demotion. A lead pipe to my kneecaps, I don’t fucking know.

I do _not_ expect Kane to show up while I’m halfway through peeling my wetsuit off. I don’t expect a repeat of his original congratulations on finishing that job. I don’t miss how he fidgets with the slip in his hand. Every once in a while, his smile slips and he glances down at it, like he forgot it was there.

Black. I think of Richard Rice. Of Haley Fremon. Kat Brock. Those jobs and more, the murders that got me paid and distracted me from the static in my head. The Scouts don’t actually call it that, but calling it a hit sounds too corny-gangster-movie for my tastes.

I especially don’t expect. Uh. This.

I press as close to the van window as I can and pretend not to be unsettled by the glowing red eyes directed at me. Call this the third time I’ve spoken to Devon, and it feels… unsafe. Like I shouldn’t look at him, let alone dare to speak.

It might be the analytical way he looks at me. The fact he hasn’t said a word since melting out of Kane’s shadow and into the seat beside me. I don’t know what to say either, though, so I just stare at him while my real body watches the river slip past as the van winds its way back toward town.

“Well, this is fun,” Kane mutters.

Devon shoots a look at him. He purses his lips when his eyes return to mine.

“You aren’t afraid of me.”

He leans forward ever so slightly, and I prove myself wrong: I can definitely move closer to the window. I want to argue that I am absolutely afraid of him, but. I’m too tired to sustain fear. If he’d wanted to hurt me it would have happened already. 

If I’m not scared of the blood my hands are drenched in I think I can handle this guy.

“None of this is real.” The words echo in my head, assurance I didn’t say them out loud, and I’m pleased to hear them level and calm. I nod my head toward Kane, though the real one just tilts slightly in that direction. “He’s the one holding the death card, anyway.”

“Interesting.” His eyes narrow slightly, and he smiles. The tension lessens immediately, and I’m left in a full van with a weird middle-aged man smiling awkwardly at me. “I’d wondered why Kane was so hung up on you.”

I glance at Kane, but his eyes remain lowered to the slip in his hands. I _know_ he knows I’m looking at him, but he doesn’t move. He’s actually acting like a statue for once, please end me.

“What do you want?” I ask, a little more barbed than may be wise. I shake my head slightly and continue. “A visit from a councilmember—this is almost unheard of, isn’t it?”

His humor only seems to grow, and I can’t shake the feeling that he’s laughing at me. The council does that, I guess, make fun of you with just their eyes.

“Some of the other members see your avoidance as grounds for retribution.” Those words do not match the slight curl to the corners of his lips or the light tone. I hate it, because I do the same exact shit and my subconscious needs to quit calling me out like this. “As I was the first to voice any disagreement, I have been charged with the task of bringing you to heel.”

Bringing me to heel.

His eyes glitter and the uncanny valley returns. I don’t know what’s wrong with his face but it puts me on edge. I’m still not scared of him—I’ve dealt with cryptic, controlling, spooky assholes before—but that doesn’t mean I like him.

“What does that entail, exactly?” I ask after a brief pause. I sound a hell of a lot braver than I feel but I have my work face on. No one gets to know I have emotions as long as I’m metaphorically in the uniform I never wear.

He flashes a pleased look, so fast I think I may have imagined it, then holds a hand palm-up in front of Kane. The black slip of paper lands in his hand without further prompting and he makes a show of inspecting it while he speaks.

“I find you entertaining. The council may cry for your blood—” Or the blood of those I care about, more likely. “—but I do not. You may resent me for my punishment, but I assure you it is kind next to the others on offer.”

He offers the slip in my direction and I know I don’t want to take it. I don’t want to get anywhere close enough to him to touch that slip. I don’t want to know who they want me to kill. I don’t want to see it, because the small and scared part of me wants to believe not knowing will keep me from performing how they want me to.

But I know I’m going to take it.

I know I’m going to do it, because that’s what I am.

I hold eye contact with Devon, who lost his smile somewhere along with way, and take the paper. It’s thick cardstock, like everything else sent directly from the council. They couldn’t make it any more obvious this is just for me, a special present in exchange for screwing up the execution of a job.

Or is it for ignoring them? Devon never really mentioned Gravity Falls.

He inclines his head toward the note in my hand, but I let my gaze drift to Kane. I expect to find him watching me, searching for weakness for old times sake. But, no, he has a thinly veiled glare pinned right at the side of Devon’s head. If looks could kill, there’d be a smoking hole burnt through that slicked black hair.

Devon makes a motion I can’t look fast enough to catch, and Kane looks away. He turns to glare out the window instead. I’ve run out of distractions.

I look at the paper in my hands.

I keep looking.

I can read the words just fine, but they stop somewhere before the meaning can really sink in. They’re paintballs up against a pressure washer of incomprehension. I struggle, with each word that trickles past the shock response, not to show real emotion. I can’t let the others in the van see or hear any of this.

“Get out,” I whisper.

My head screams at me that I'm talking to a member of the Scout's council.

“I—”

But the rest of me doesn't give a flying fuck.

“ _Leave_.” 

I glare through the discomfort at such direct eye contact. His brow raises a notch. I may be imagining it, but the glow in his eyes fades and his head lowers slightly before he vanishes. 

I don’t know what I expected when I ignored the council’s summons. The bleak look Kane give me before he disappears as well tells me he didn’t expect _this_ any more than I did.


	6. Connor in the In-Between Part One

**Connor**

“Perfect.”

I wait for them to do something. Say some kind of code, clap their hands, summon a shower of sparks. Flick my nose, maybe?

After a few seconds, the splinter backs up with a nod.

“Great,” Virtuoso pushes at them to clear the space around the map. “Now I can get a second opinion on how to proceed.”

The splinter fades right out of sight with a wave in my direction. They’re more high energy than the closest of Sawyer’s splinters. I wonder where all of it comes from. Before I can say a word, Virtuoso tugs my arm to turn me around.

They study the map, now zoomed in on the end of it. Circles indicate four of the points, but the bright line of whatever timeline Virtuoso has already steered us through ends just before the first of those branches. I try to see whatever it is they see, but it just looks like a mess of unlabelled yellow lines to me.

At the thought, they grumble and four screens appear. A still of Sawyer speaking to Cross, a night vision image of Cross with his hands spread in a shrug, Sawyer frozen in the middle of a hallway, and them seated in Cross’s office with their hand held to their arm. 

The obvious connection is Sawyer.

“If I push too hard, they’ll stop listening. If I leave them alone, they keep doing stupid shit,” they explain. “I know _you_ know you can’t leave the prison without taking the right steps so I don’t have to babysit on your end, but planting doubt in them is much harder than I expected.”

“Nectar does that.” I wish the last image didn’t draw my gaze the way it does. The more I look, the less I can convince myself they aren’t hurting themself. I avert my eyes. “What do you need my help with, exactly?”

“If it’s not keeping Sawyer from being dragged to the screening rooms—” The first of the branches glows brighter. “—it’s making sure they get to overhear enough from your group to give them questions—” The third, this time. “Or that they don’t get themself killed.”

Both the second and fourth images grow. I swallow, my eyes stuck on the tracks of nectar on sawyer’s forearm. Virtuoso’s trying to help them, so we’d better get started.

I reach out to zoom in on where we must be now. The still of Sawyer, tense and nearly pressed back against the wall, talking to the warden blows up while the others dim. 

“What’s the problem here?”

—— 

Now that Virtuoso doesn’t have to worry about me going rogue when they pause the universe, they only move it forward when the Jess on the outside presses play on their own viewpoint. Which means the whole thing has only moved forward an hour or so in the past week. 

So, sometimes my time here is interrupted with a few minutes of solitary. It’s not a problem while I’m there, since I don’t remember the time spent here in the interim. Returning from that is a little disorienting, though.

The splinter has been trying to distract me.

I hover with them a few hundred feet above Virtuoso’s workstation. They ejected us both when Jess pulled out the playing cards, so we’re up here playing Go Fish because neither of us can remember how to play Rummy or Cribbage. It’s a good pseudo-interrogation tactic.

Get a match? Great, you get to have a question answered.

“Do you blame us for any of this? Me and Sawyer, I mean,” they ask before asking for a card. The second they do, though, they have another match and I reconsider how wise it is to play a game like his with someone borne of the In-Between.

“No,” I say without much feeling behind it. “Everyone here chose to come, they told me themself they would have come with or without us. I guess a part of me knew that before we got here.”

“Yeah, that was the plan.” They shrug and sift through their hand. “I don’t agree anymore with a lot of the little stuff, but that might be because all of my impulse control went to the poor bastard under Cross’s control.”

“Remarkably self aware, too!”

“Shut up and do the card thing.”

I do, and it’s a pleasant surprise to get one of their cards. “Okay, why leave this part of you here if you want to apprehend Cross?”

Their grip tightens on their cards, and a sharp stripe of red bolts through the dark air. They shake their head and the afterimage of it disappears. For a second, I think they might not answer.

Then, they sigh.

“We really shot ourselves in the foot with the ‘nobody dies,’ thing.” They look away, into the darkness of their own world. “It’s good for us, yeah, but it means Cross would have a chance to bounce the fuck out of there when he dies here. I’m here to snatch him while he’s passing through. Got any aces?”

Uh.

“Wait, you’re supposed to be the _bad cop?_ ”

They shrug and look back. “It’s not your turn yet. Aces?”

“Go fish.”

They do and immediately hand over the king they drew when I ask for it. I wait for them to answer the question, but now they’re distracted. They keep their eyes on their hand. The silence stretches until they realise it’s their turn and I already asked my question.

“Hate for Cross is a universal constant.” The distance vanishes from their features, replaced with the same bright smile that put me on edge when I first got here. “I’d like to lock him in the memories, let his own fears rip him to shreds, but again—”

They hold a hand out and mouth ‘queen.’ I place one in their hand and they grin.

“He’d just crop up again later anyway. Even I can see how the original plan is the best one.”

There’s an obvious question here, but…

“You never told me the whole plan,” I muse. “Before, it was just that you needed closure. Sawyer said they didn’t want to be afraid anymore. Those aren’t plans, though, they’re concepts.”

Their brow quirks and a hand appears in lieu of the ones currently shuffling through their hand to shake a stern finger at me. “You’re a fast learner. I should be used to that. Cross’s final destination is the cell blocks.”

I don’t know how much of my surprise I show, but they ignore it. 

“What do you miss the most of the outside?” they ask after a beat of silence.

“Shit, that’s a hard one, give me a minute.”

The obvious answer is Sawyer—Jess, since it sounds like they still go by that name on the outside—but that would be rude to say, wouldn’t it? I mean, a splinter of them has been playing cards with me for upwards of half an hour now. They _are_ Jess, even if it’s only the most powerful parts of them.

Most powerful and the hardest to control, which is an interesting side of them to see.

Focus.

Of course, the real answer is just as obvious. If I can say it through the lump in my throat, of course.

“I miss seeing the real world,” I answer with some difficulty. “I mean, we missed your prom. We missed all those end-of-year band concerts. It’s summer now. I feel like I should be there.”

Before my eyes, a pocket of sunshine appears, but I know it’s not real. It’s just the In-Between reacting to my thoughts. It’s like the memories, so it automatically turns my stomach.

Jess waves a hand and the light disappears. They stand with a distracted shake of their head. “That’s what I thought. We should do this again sometime, but I think V has some good news for you.”

I look down and, yes, Virtuoso’s trying to wave us down. I take Jess’s hand and when I stand we’re right next to the screens again. The splinter vanishes without a word to leave me alone with Virtuoso and their smile that doesn’t look quite right.

“Don’t get your hopes up too high, but I might be able to get you to the Cube during these pauses.” They gesture vaguely at the distant darkness to my left. “Maybe. We’ll see. I’ll need that splinter’s help if I want this to work. More reliable access to the door. A safe way to snap you back, warning system, I don’t know.”

They trail off, and I’m not completely sure if they’re still talking to me. After a second, they shake their head.

“That’s all. I should get back to work.”

They turn away and I utterly fail not to get my hopes up.

——

The first time the door shows up, I understand why Jess was so happy to see me. I do like spending time with them, and Virtuoso isn’t bad company when we convince them to take a step back from planning. It would be great to hear a voice that isn’t Sawyer’s, though.

So, the door shows up while I’m trying to remember the layout of The Lounge. The In-Between is being helpful in building it for visual reference, though all that’s really doing is creeping me out.

Virtuoso notices it before I do, mostly because it took the place of one of the doors the In-Between had set up for my illusion. The light behind me changes, and the sound of footsteps on the stone of my fictional floor pulls me out of my head.

Everything but the door at the far end of it disappears.

It looks a lot like the rest of the doors in the Cube. Dark, impossible to tell what it’s made of, with a dull brass knob. Jess will only accept clashing aesthetics, thanks. This one has a constellation of etched dots. It’s only when I get closer that I realize they’re connected by thin lines to make a cube.

“What is it?” I hiss.

They flap a hand at me and presses their head against the door. Distantly, a voice drifts through. I can’t quite hear it, but Virtuoso jerks back. They retreat, grab my sleeve as they pass, and drag me away from the solitary door.

“Hey! Who’s on the other side?”

They don’t answer. They don’t even look at me until we get back to their station. The door gives off its own light, so the screens and maps are all washed out.

“Virtuoso?”

They just shake their head and turn back to their screens. I’d accept it if they weren’t so obviously on-edge about it. I wait to see if they’ll give in and tell me without prompting, but they only hunch down more.

“V?”

“Don’t call me that,” they mutter. “And stay away from that door.”

That’s a tone that normally gets me to back off with Sawyer. Jess. Whichever name is the right one for the one on the outside. It’s too tired and beaten down to try pushing against. Trying to ask more feels too much like messing with ancient parchment, like you’re asking it to dissolve right in front of your eyes.

But this isn’t Jess and that looks suspiciously like a door back to the Cube.

“Why not?”

“Talking to them won’t help you.” They still don’t look. They pull down a map of the tunnels beyond the prison. “And it certainly won’t help any of us.”

I definitely don’t like that.

“Who?”

They turn back with a frustrated half-shriek. “You are so much like that splinter, it kills me. Can’t you just leave it alone?”

“I told you he’d agree with me,” Jess calls from their invisible hiding spot.

“About what?” I spin back to face the nothingness they spoke from. “Who’s on the other side of that door?”

Neither of them answer. When Jess makes it clear they aren’t throwing themself into this more than they have, I turn back to Virtuoso. They have a hard glare pointed at the door. I flinch when they turn it on me.

“It’s Jesse,” they finally admit.

“What—?”

“But I can’t let you talk to them.”

I roll my eyes and start for the door.

“You’ll make them look for me,” they continue, following at my side. “They’ll tear this world apart for a reason all of this could be happening when I’m just trying to fix it. You _can’t_ —” 

Their desperation makes me stop a couple yards away. Virtuoso plants themself between me and the door while I peer over their shoulder with longing.

“They don’t even know you’re here?”

They shake their head. “They do, but nothing more than that.”

“Maybe we should change that,” I murmur. I sidestep them.

_"There’s blue nectar now?” Alex eyes the bag of the stuff in my hands. “What does it do?”_

_I jerk my head back at Kevin and Donovan, who run between us and Zee. Their eyes remain glazed and desolate. I only got the feedback of what they did, I can’t imagine what it was like for them._

_“You know when you look at your life and think it can’t get any worse?” I pause at the ruined door to check for blacksuits. “Yeah, this is what happens when Murphy’s Law hears you and decides to break your kneecaps in exchange.”_

_We manage to creep across the stone chamber to the cleft in the wall. The sooner we get out of Cross’s line of sight, the better. Even if we end up having to go back, even if it’s in nearly complete darkness, it’s nice to not have to worry about_ one thing _._

 _“But,” Alex pipes up again once we’re under cover again. “What does it_ do?"

_“It keeps you from fighting. It’s—I don’t know how to describe it, man. Bad.” I’m still unsatisfied with that, but it’s the best I can do. “It’s just bad.”_

_“Oh.”_

_I stop to nudge Kevin up the hill while Zee and Alex do the same with Donovan. I hope they recover from this. It’s just another thing to put on the list of things I let happen to—_

The distant gasoline skyline of the In-Between replaces the true darkness of the tunnels. When I look around, the door has gone and Virtuoso stands in front of their screens. They lean against nothing, their features tight.

“I’m sorry. I panicked, and you—” They stop and chew their lip. “Just, please don’t talk to them. They can’t know anything about me. Not until this world is over and done.”

I don’t want to do this. I want to be able to talk to them if they come calling. It sounds like Jess wants to, too, but even they haven’t.

Yeah, I get why they were excited to see me. I’ve been alone in the memories with no one to talk to. To have the option right there and not be able to say anything?

It’s rough, but I guess it’s how things have to be.

“Yeah,” I agree after too long, and they immediately relax. “I won’t talk to them.”

They flash me a brief smile and turn to actually face the screens again. I sigh and turn back into the darkness.

Guess I gotta start over rebuilding The Lounge.

——

I nearly collapse when the universe lets me go.

Echoes of that blue nectar keep bouncing around in my head. It tells me to sleep, tells me not to fight, tells me to let gravity take me. It would be better to just rest now anyway, right?

“Connor!”

I manage to just stumble into someone’s arms instead of falling. The feeling fades after a few seconds, and I shudder out a breath. Anger takes the place of the exhaustion in an instant. My fingers curl into—

Uh, into Jess’s jacket, I guess.

“Everything will get easier now,” they murmur. “You have what you need to win.”

“There are a lot of ifs between me and the surface.” I shake my head and back out of their grip. “It doesn’t matter. I kinda just want to go to sleep.”

I turn to leave, but something about their smile hold me back. I sort of know the difference between their placeholder smiles and the real ones, and this one is more real. It crinkles their eyes and gives me pause.

“What is it?” I ask suspiciously.

They rock back on their heels so dramatically they’d probably overbalance if we were somewhere with real physics. “V said I can help once we get past all these dangerous bits with Cross.”

Okay, so maybe this whole thing isn’t so hopeless.

“Great!” I can’t get enough feeling into my voice, because this is the best news I could possibly get right now. “How will that work, exactly? I have a feeling Virtuoso doesn’t work well with others.”

They shrug, but not knowing apparently doesn’t factor into their good mood. “We haven’t talked the details down yet, but this is good! We might even be able to get physical form in the universe with the two of us working together.”

“Because they would totally go for that.” 

“It’s the best shot we have to make sure we can catch Cross when this is over!”

I’ll go ahead and ignore my knee jerk reaction at that. They have good intentions, no matter how crazy the two of them might be. There have to be some ways that releasing a control freak and a impulsive fragment, both of whom have near god-like powers, into a universe that’s already falling apart can be a good thing.

“What about everyone else?”

But Jess doesn’t even seem to hear me. They push me back toward the glowing lights of Virtuoso’s work space with a distracted little hum.

“You wanted to get some rest, right? Better do that before things heat up again.”

I stumble a little and they’re gone before I can question them further.

I try to gather up the fury I had when I first came back, but Jess dispelled it before it could even register. The underlying anger about Cross, the way Sawyer has been brainwashed, the new nectar, Cross using them against me, it’s all still there. All I get when I try to get point it at anything, though, is fear.

Fear, and exhaustion.

I’ll definitely need to sleep before I talk to Virtuoso about how to proceed.


End file.
